Austrian filmmaker Marie Kreutzer has said Gentle Monster began with a newspaper report she read in 2020 about an investigation into a German paedophile ring. The inquiry ended in dozens of arrests during a large series of raids.
She called the article shocking and explicit, and said it showed that perpetrators can be much closer than people want to think. The report covered the investigation and the personal lives of those involved. Kreutzer said the disturbing part was the sense that it could be someone she knew, and that she asked herself how she would react if it were her partner.
In the film, police raid the home of a French pianist played by Léa Seydoux and tell her they are investigating her husband, the father of her child. Hard drives are seized, and officers say they expect to find large amounts of child sexual abuse imagery. Seydoux said her agent warned that, because she has children, she might not want the role. She said she was afraid of the subject, then found the script moving because nothing explicit is shown.
Kreutzer, whose international breakthrough came in 2022 with the Vicky Krieps period drama Corsage, later linked the project to a separate Austrian case. Florian Teichtmeister, a lead actor in Corsage, was arrested for possession of more than 76,000 child sexual abuse images. Kreutzer said she learned of allegations against him in 2021, after filming had wrapped, and that he had convincingly assured her and others that they were false.
She said that while Corsage was on the Oscar shortlist there were demands to pull it from cinemas, which she described as impossible because the film had sold to 92 countries. She said she also thought that unfair to the 350 other people who worked on it. She described being shouted at in the street in Vienna and criticised by colleagues. A credit at the end of Gentle Monster thanks “all the haters who made me stronger in 2023, and made me want to make this film even more”.
Kreutzer said she was glad Teichtmeister’s crimes were uncovered, because every perpetrator uncovered is one less, and that the scandal affected some child-protection rules in Austria. After he pleaded guilty and received a two-year suspended sentence for possessing and processing or altering child sexual abuse images, the Austrian government introduced what she called the Teichtmeister Law, which among other measures extended penalties for crimes involving such images.
Gentle Monster premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May, is in selected cinemas from 30 October, and streams on Netflix from 18 November. Kreutzer said some people who wrote to her after screenings identified themselves as victims of child abuse, and that one described the film as healing. Seydoux said the subject has to be talked about, and that it would be a good thing if the film helped people feel less alone.